This winter is different. For the longest time, I ran a computing business out of the home – I was at the hale all day long. It was great. I’d set my clients’ computers to a task, be it various sundry scans or whatnot, then go play with the plants. However, a local business offered me a job I couldn’t turn down this last Fall. I still putter on computers at home for clients, but no-where near what I used to do. The drawback? I can’t just up and go to the greenhouse at any given moment. And… I never really got a winter-garden going this winter.

It’s a bit of a challenge switching gears and re-aligning my time-management habits to the new schedule – but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. Especially now that the days are getting longer and the sun’s still up when I get off work.

Anyway, in spite of all that, I still managed a little impromptu container garden. I had dug one of the Kai Kea out of it’s bed and potted it up and brought it inside for the winter. The rest are dormant but I wanted to be sure that if the worst happened, I had at least one specimen. And, of course, every time I pass the pot that it’s in, I see all that dirt. Just one plant didn’t seem like enough…

Me wee little container garden.

So in a fit of desperate determination to have at least one little container of something yummy growing this winter, something that I could at any moment go harvest bit by bit, no matter how small it was – I found some spinach seeds and planted some. If anything, it was a therapeutic pleasure to see the little seed sprout and new spinach plants form, knowing that soon their fresh crispy leaves would grace a sandwich or salad. Folks, they ain’t gonna fill a tummy, but it sure is satisfying tossing a few of those leaves on a sandwich, knowing that they cost me no more than a few moments and a little TLC…

What’s the Moral of this Babble? If you do nothing else, get something, anything, growing in a little pot over the winter. It’s like a continuation of your gardening, even if it’s on a tiny scale. More of a benefit for the mind than the tummy, but still invaluable.